California-based Connected Camps is part of a growing offering of online camps that fill a unique niche to complement their traditional pine-and-mortar counterparts. Accessible across the U.S. and around the world, the camp offers programs in engineering, architecture, coding, animation, game design and storytelling, all hosted on custom Minecraft servers or delivered with MIT’s Scratch coding software. Each weeklong program connects kids with fellow campers and expert mentors who support the participants and share their expertise.

“We meet kids where they are, where they’re already engaged with social and interest-driven learning,” said Mimi Ito, a co-founder of Connected Camps and a cultural anthropologist whose research focuses on how young people engage with digital media. “If you’re already messing around with redstone in Minecraft, this is a pathway for you to learn circuitry and get interested in engineering.”

Read the full story at KQED News.